"Well," said Mrs. Stimpson, "it is most unpleasant to me to see a young girl like you owing all this money to her milliner." "It isn't very pleasant for _me_," said Daphne ruefully; "but if you won't advance the money, and I can't or mustn't sell the pendant, I don't very well see how I can help it." "I'll tell you what I'll do," said Mrs. Stimpson. "I really _oughtn't_ to--and under ordinary circumstances I couldn't afford it, but, as it happens, a great-uncle of mine left me a small legacy not long ago, and I haven't spent quite all of it yet. So I don't mind buying this for thirty pounds myself." "Will you really?" cried Daphne. "How angelic of you!" "I think it is," said Mrs. Stimpson; "but I feel myself responsible for you, to some extent. So I'll write you a cheque for the thirty pounds, and you can send it off to this milliner person at once." She went to the writing-table and filled up the cheque. "There," she said, handing it to Daphne, "put it in an envelope and direct it at once--you'll find a stamp in that box, and it can go by the next post." "By the way, my dear," she added, as she was leaving the room, "I needn't tell you that _I_ shall not breathe a word to a soul of our little transaction, and I should advise you, in your own interests, to keep it entirely to yourself." "I was quite wrong about Mrs. Stimpson," Daphne told herself reproachfully, after she had slipped the letter containing bill and cheque into the letter-box in the hall. "She _can_ be kind sometimes, and I've been a little beast to see only the comic side of her! I daresay she won't even _wear_ that pendant." But Mrs. Stimpson had every intention of wearing it that same evening. It is not often that one has the opportunity of doing a kindness and securing a real bargain at a single stroke; and she knew enough about jewels to be fully aware that, if the ornament was a trifle old-fashioned, she had not done at all badly over her purchase. "It really suits me very well," she thought, as, after putting the last touches to her evening demi-toilette, she fastened the pendant round her neck. "Even better than I expected. It was lucky Miss Heritage came to _me_. A jeweller would have been sure to cheat her, poor child!" And she went down to the drawing-room feeling serenely satisfied with herself. CHAPTER II RUSHING TO CONCLUSIONS Mrs. Wibberley-Stimpson, as she sat in the drawing-room, where the curtains had been drawn and the lamps lighted, was occupied with a project which she was anxious to impart to her husband as soon as he returned. Some time before a dull rumble from the valley had informed her that his usual train was approaching Gablehurst station, and now she heard the click of the front gate, the crunch of his well-known step on the gravel, and the opening of the hall door.